A massive data breach of the adult dating and entertainment company Friend Finder Network has exposed more than 412 million accounts, including (and this is really bad) over 15 million “deleted” records that were not purged from the databases. Over the weekend it became clear that 339 million names, addresses and phone numbers of registered users at the AdultFriendFinder site were hacked. All these records are now owned by cyber criminals, exposing highly sensitive personal information. On top of the AdultFriendFinder records, 62M accounts from Cams.com, and 7M from Penthouse.com were stolen, as well as a few million from other smaller properties owned by the company.

Cyber criminals are going to leverage this event in a lot of different ways: (spear-) phishing attacks, bogus websites where you can “check if your spouse is cheating on you”, or ways to find out if your own extramarital affair has come out.

Any of these 339 million registered AdultFriendFinder users are now a target for a multitude of social engineering attacks. People that have (had) straight or gay extramarital affairs can be made to click on links in emails that threaten to out them.

There will be phishing emails that claim people can go to a website to find out if their private data has been released. This is a nightmare that will be exploited by spammers, phishers and blackmailers who are now gleefully rubbing their hands, let alone the divorce lawyers and private investigators that are going to pour over the data.

Be on the lookout for threatening email messages which slip through spam filters that have anything to do with AdultFriendFinder, or that refer to exposing your activity on the site and delete them immediately, both in the office or at the house.

Do not click on any links or open attachments in emails that appear to come from AdultFriendFinder. Instead, go directly to the website to change a password or get more information.

Please forward this to friends, family, colleagues and peers.